Goal Setting in Trading. What Are Your Goals?

Whatever you do and hope to achieve, it is important to be fully aware of your goals in order to get exactly what you want and keep yourself motivated on the long and challenging road. The more clearly you set your goal, the more likely you will get exactly what you need.

It sounds simple, however, most people do not set clear goals for themselves. In trading, as in everyday life, traders often do not have clearly defined goals, and consequently, do not know how to achieve them.

What are your goals in trading? Why did you start this kind of business?

First off, let’s consider the key goals that most traders set for themselves, as well as those who are just beginning to study trading or investing in financial markets:

• Making a profit equal to X over a certain period of time.
• Self-realization in trading as in business: the use of trading to earning extra income, exploring alternatives for investing your capital and knowledge.
• Professional trading in the market, where a trader manages mostly other people’s money. That is, most of the money used in trading is investors’ money.
• Personal growth: willpower, discipline and character training. These qualities are improving when trading in the market. Trading is a great way to get to know and strengthen the weaknesses of your character.

I have not met traders who came to the financial markets, setting themselves the last goal as the main one. However, this point is often an additional goal. I would like to note that when trading in financial markets you will be inevitably faced with the need for severe self-discipline. If you don’t have this skill now, don’t worry, since this quality will be trained on your way to becoming a trader.

If you study trading and financial markets and trade, you will inevitably become a more disciplined person. A professional trader and just any good trader is primarily a disciplined person.

In fact, discipline is the cornerstone of trading in the financial markets.

A person without discipline simply will not be able to follow his trading plan. He will act emotionally and spontaneously getting a predictable result – he will blow up his trading account.

At the same time, discipline as a human characteristic is being developed in the process of trading, if a trader tries to scrupulously follow his trading plan, eliminates mistakes, examines the experience of other traders, trying to understand their mistakes and competitive advantages. In addition, when studying trading in the market, you will definitely improve your financial capability.

As mentioned above, in this article we’ve highlighted the most often set goals by the clients I worked with and traders who were just starting to study financial markets.

If you start trading in the financial markets, I encourage you to write down your own goals right now. Answer the question: why have you come to financial markets? To make the most accurate trading plan, you should understand your goal and common strategy for achieving this goal.

Set the goal and describe the way to achieve it, at least in a few words. They should be specified and be in front of you. If you start trading emotionally at some point, lose your way and stop following your trading plan, you can always look at this record and review your goals to focus again on the most important thing.

Thus, you can easily remember why you came to trading and increase your motivation. That reminder will let you clearly understand where you are going and what strategy you are following now.

Now, after your goal has been set, you should think about the way to achieving it. There are two key strategies for achieving goals in trading. You can find out about it in the next article.